


Reevaluating the Roots

by crookedspoon



Series: Feed Me, Also, River God [33]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Introspection, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 11:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11274921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: How Ivy's powers manifested, a retelling.





	Reevaluating the Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



The first time Ivy ran away from home, she was seven. She didn't exactly plan for it to happen; it was no cloak-and-dagger operation the way her second attempt would turn out to be, so perhaps to call it "running away" is overstating it a little. She had merely decided not to return home. Her father was there, a man she hadn't seen in over a year because he had been locked up somewhere for doing something bad or so she gathered. She had grown used to sharing her space with her mother and her houseplants but now this space has shrunk in her father's added presence.

No, she didn't want to go home. She didn't have any other place to go to, but that was of no concern to her at that moment. She simply walked off the school grounds with her backpack on and instead of turning right like every day after class was over, she turned left, intent on placing as much distance between herself and her home as she could.

She got as far as Robinson Park when a police officer helpfully returned her to her family. Her father had not been glad to see her, especially since she led a cop to his doorstep, and later he would show her exactly how that made him feel. The next day, her mother would dress Ivy in a bulging sweater despite the balmy weather because it covered her crooked posture well, hiding it from inquiring eyes. Whatever happened at home was nobody's business, or so the lesson went.

 

The second time she ran away, she was smarter about it. She'd packed a bag with clothes and food and some tomato and paprika seeds, hoping to settle somewhere with a vegetable garden. There are many abandoned properties in Gotham. Surely one of them must have a garden near it.

She waited until nightfall, until her parents went to bed – or her mother did. Her father had likely fallen asleep in front of the TV again, stupid with beer and the empty promises commercial breaks delivered. She made sure her plants had enough water for the next two weeks, because her parents couldn't be trusted to look after them, before she slipped out of her window. She had been thinking about ways to take her plants with her, but there had been no way they'd all have fit in her bag. She might have to come back for them one by one as soon as she had found a place to put them.

This time she roamed the streets for a day in search of a suitable spot before she made it to the train station. She had some coins saved up and considered whether putting distance between her father and herself was worth putting the same distance between herself and her plants. Sure, she could always get new ones, but it wouldn't be the same.

In the end, her coins weren't enough but for a fare out of Gotham. The station attendant was apparently bored enough to meddle in the affairs of a young girl loitering about the deserted train station in the middle of the night to call the authorities. They took her back to the station to get some rest, then asked her where she'd come from. Dutifully, Ivy said nothing.

Hours later, when the sun was up, her mother came limping into the station to pick her up. It was understood that she wouldn't run away again after that, if her mother meant anything to her. She didn't, not really. Whatever happened at home, her mother _let_ happen. But Ivy was still bothered by a vague sense of moral obligation in those days, so she couldn't in good conscience abandon her mother again.

So she had to stay, whether she liked it or not.

It was okay, in its own way. Ivy had her peace lily and her spider plants. They made life bearable. Plants don't scream at you for being late. Plants don't hurt you when they've had enough. Plants don't judge.

They listen. They understand.

So Ivy tried to understand them in turn. She dedicated her time to cultivating not only a green thumb but an entire green hand. She got books on horticulture from the library, even asked the owner of a small gardening store to train her as part of a school project or so she claimed, just so she would learn which plants preferred which type of soil, which degree of warmth, which amount of sunlight.

It was important to know those things in Gotham, where the lighting is bad and the sky perpetually overcast and only the hardiest plants can thrive.

But however much she learned, she didn't get the sense of offering her plants the same kind of comfort they were offering her. That would come later.

 

She'd been stupid. She had often been stupid, but this time, she had been especially stupid, the kind that got you killed stupid. Because it did. It did get her killed. Or something close to it. She isn't sure exactly. Could be either. In Gotham, you never know. Fish Mooney came back after all, or so she heard.

That was before she saw Fish Mooney, with her own eyes. Selina was there and tried to warn her, tried to get Ivy off the hook, but Ivy had been too freaked out by the monsters to latch onto it. She played it tough, threatening to expose their hideout, as if that wasn't a surefire way to end with shears in your eye or however these guys preferred their kills. Well, (near?) death experiences grant you new perspectives on life, or at least the life you've been leading up to now, and Ivy had to admit that that moment wasn't her finest.

Luckily for her, it wasn't her final moment either. Although it should have been.

Mooney had set one of her monsters on her, grubby fingers first, no weapons necessary, because his fingers _were_ the weapons. They latched onto her.

Ivy remembers screaming. Intense cold leeched the warmth from her skin at the same time as searing pain tore through her limbs. They were growing, aching, then growing brittle, as the heat slicing into her marrow made way for an icy chill to fill the void.

Something vital was being taken from her. She was being sapped of all energy. Of all anger, of all sadness, of all fear, too. By the end, she felt nothing anymore.

 

When she came to again, it was to a feeling of alienation – about her surroundings and her body in relation to those surroundings. She was cushioned on a bed of dried leaves, covered in dirt, twigs, and more leaves, with no recollection of how she got there. There was an ache inside her, and cold. She was desiccated, but at the same time she felt too full for her size, too long, too tall.

Something about her had changed. This body didn't feel like hers at all, as if she didn't belong in it, although she was aware of its sensations. It felt like a stack of coats, thick winter coats, thrown one on top of the other until you could barely move under their weight. It felt like being encased in a full suit of armor and looking out through the open visor; but unlike a suit of armor, this body offered no extra protection from harm. It just _was_ extra.

(Later, she would come to wear close-fitting dresses to encase this feeling of strangeness, to contain this feeling of too much. It was only right that her clothes should no longer fit this too large body of hers. It calmed the dissonance between perception and being.)

Yes, it was still hers, this body, although it was not _her._ She hadn't been allowed to grow into it. She had happened into it, like a body swap. She still held the phantom of her smaller body inside, like a husk or an empty seed.

But there was more.

In these beginning stages of re-orientation, there was no space inside her for thought. Need was all she had. Food, water, shelter, warmth, a bath. Procuring these things was without question of the highest priority. After that, her thoughts slowly became unclouded. Still, Ivy began to notice changes even if she could not verbalize them.

Walking through the streets of Gotham proved to be a whole new experience. It was like visiting a place from her childhood she hadn't been to in years or a place she had only dreamed of, at once strange and familiar.

It wasn't that Gotham had changed while she had been in the woods. Nothing was new, everything was the same. She recognized all of it. 

It wasn't Gotham that was different, it was her perspective.

With this taller body of hers, her vantage point had moved up. Everything seemed smaller somehow. Now, she could easily reach the top shelf in the supermarket. Now, she could easily look over other people's heads. She could also spit on the heads of those children who had bullied her before, when she was a small. Midget, they'd called her. Well, look who's the midget now.

It was strange to think that they had meant her. Strange that it hurt her at all. Now it just seemed like a silly thing that children said to one another. She felt so far removed from it all.

She felt far away from the self she had been.

It's like she didn't recognize herself anymore. She had memories of herself only days prior, how lonely she'd been without Selina, how determined not to show it, and how she'd preferred to stay close to her mushroom garden instead of going back to the shelter. Selina was never there anyway, unless she wanted something.

Yet somehow these memories seemed like that of another person. She was no longer emotionally connected to them.

She was connected to something else, somehow, something outside herself that she couldn't quite place at first. She had felt it back in the woods, too, although she had been preoccupied with more pressing matters at the time.

Well, how could she have guessed that it was her plants she shared a weird sort of connection with? They'd always managed to calm her down, to erase her troubles, and she, with the confidence of a child, was convinced she could somehow communicate with them. So she didn't immediately catch on when her pretense had become reality, in a way.

It was by no means a conversation. It was more like being able to tell when her ficus tree was thirsty or when its roots needed more space. It was similar to knowing when she herself was hungry and what she wanted to eat. Only vaguer, like songs you remember having heard through a wall. It helped to be close to them, dig her fingers into the soil, touch their roots, their leaves or their stamens.

This sensation became more precise over time. Soon she was able to feel out the ingredients she needed for a tincture to have a certain effect. That was how she created her obedience perfume. It was her Sarracenia that suggested it.

There was no describing the exhilaration, the giddiness of it all. Grown men dropped their weapons when she told them to, vendors let her steal from under their noses, and police officers would carry her bags for her. This was the life. She would have to test the limits of her perfume. But for now it sufficed to know that she could get out of any sticky situation as long as the other person got close enough for a sniff.

For the first time in her life, Ivy felt rooted, secure, in company. She no longer had to run away and worry about what would happen to her plants. She could stay right here with them, because there was no reason to be afraid anymore. 

She was her own woman now. No father who made rules, no mother who followed them, no Selina who left her hanging. 

She didn't need anyone as long as there was green in the world.


End file.
